iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 31/05/2026

One queen recognizes another. Though Mystic's realm is small, she rules it with fierce claws and swift pounces.

Glossy black cat Mystic sits on chair, paws outstretched. Yes, she's queen of this place.

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 29/05/2026

"What's in the bag?" "Pain. And a fuzzbucket."

Black cat Mystic sits under a large red gift bag. Only her eyes are visible. Caption: "Put your hand in the bag, young Paul Atreides."

062

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 21/05/2026

OK, I mistakenly bought paté canned food for Mystic. I thought she'd hate it as she's always never eaten much of it when I served it, but she ate 100% of both servings. If she keeps eating it, her options for food are about double what they used to be.

Black cat Mystic sitting on a sofa, just a head shot. There's a small notch in her right ear which is very visible.

000

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 18/05/2026

A Ramen Slinger, heated up in the microwave for leftovers. The recipe ( crow202.com/recipes.txt , search for "Ramen Slinger") is adaptable/easy in most cases. I need to go find the hot sauce though.

Ramen, chili, cheese, and eggs in a bowl. This is a "Ramen Slinger" and a good/cheap thing to eat for those on a budget.

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 12/05/2026

Food prices have gotten so high that I can afford to make enchiladas roughly once a year. In 1996, I could do that once a month. WTF? I guess I'll just enjoy them while I still have a few left to eat, and regroup next year.

Enchiladas on a green plate, with a metal and white plastic fork on the top. The enchiladas are cold.

Enchiladas on a green plate that have been chopped into small sections and microwaved until hot. These were delicious, but expensive.

000

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 11/05/2026

IME, most cats do not love tummy rubs. Neither Moira nor Mystic (my two house panthers) would put up with them. You're lucky to have a fuzzball who appreciates this.

Black cat Moira sitting in a window, looking at the camera.

110

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 11/05/2026

Patagonian cavys are the masters of disapproval.

A light brown Patagonian cavy, looking directly at the camera and being very disapproving. Caption: I will decide your level of FAIL.

000

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 10/05/2026

Enchiladas, on Friday. I will post the next 2 pictures in about an hour. They were pretty tasty, but the price of ground beef means these will be a very infrequent meal. 20 years ago, I could eat these every month; now, it's a once-a-year treat.

Ground beef and chopped onions in a frying pan with a spatula prominently visible. Enchiladas Friday 1/4.

Ground beef and chopped onions in a frying pan, after being cooked for about 12 minutes. Taco seasoning and 1/2 cup water have been added, so the whole thing is red and somewhat cooked down from the previous image. Enchiladas Friday 2/4.

A baking pan with 10 tortillas rolled up into cylinders, each one containing about 1/10 of the frying pan's contents. Enchiladas Friday 3/4.

A baking pan with 10 enchiladas covered in red enchilada sauce and shredded cheese, before going into the oven. Enchiladas Friday 4/4.

000

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 06/05/2026

My father's cat learned how to push a chair's cushion out so that it makes a convenient comfortable cat-shaped napping spot.

Didi, my father's tabby cat, wants to go out and is looking up at the camera in a skeptical manner.

000

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 04/05/2026

Mystic is also a black cat, though "floofy" is not one of her many qualities.

Frontal view of black cat Mystic sitting down.

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 03/05/2026

Lunch. There's something satisfying in a ham and cheese sandwich. Also it was a good thing I opened the jar of kimchi yesterday, as it was under active fermentation pressure and spilled cabbage juice when I opened it over the sink. It was impossible to close the jar either; had to eat some.

A green plate with a diagonal-cut ham and cheese sandwich on wheat bread. In the background are salt and pepper shakers and a jar of kimchi.

000

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 28/04/2026

Siamese cats or cats with Siamese ancestry have a better than average chance of meowing a lot at high volume. Cats are pretty variable otherwise. Mystic here took a few years to figure out that human laps were fun to sit in:

Black cat Mystic sits in my lap, with the back of her head pointed at the camera.

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 23/04/2026

Apparently San Tan Brewing is discontinuing this beer. So a 6-pack is available for $2. What's not to like?

San Tan Brewing Boondocks Honey Blonde ale, with a picture of a boar on the cans. This beer is being discontinued, which had the store selling it for $2 per six-pack.

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 22/04/2026

Chicken and rice! crow202.com/recipes.txt , search for "chicken/rice" or line 652. First time I've made this in a year or so.

A dark green plate with some chicken and rice in the bottom portion. A metal and plastic fork is to the upper right. This was the first time I cooked chicken and rice in my new apartment.

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 20/04/2026

If first murder is not successful, second murder is no charge?

Grey cat in cat tree says, "Lestat? Never heard of him." while a black cat behind the grey cat has its mouth open and is poised to attack.

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 16/03/2026

These aren't that difficult to make, just time-consuming. Also they were very popular at work potluck parties. 1 can medium olives, 1 can large olives, a carrot or 2, 1 package cream cheese. some toothpicks, and you're set. Peel carrot, make thin slices. Chop out triangle from carrot, put that

A set of 15 penguins, constructed out of black olives, carrots, cream cheese, and toothpicks. Every time I brought these to a work potluck, they were very popular.

110

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 03/03/2026

Void cats have that certain je ne sais quoi. 21 years owned by 2 different black cats, zero regrets.

Black cat Mystic sitting on a chair, showing high-gloss fur and whiskers. Below her are a full lifebar and the title "Mystic, Dark Fuzzbucket"

020

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 26/02/2026

The differing numbers you see after the partition identifiers in /proc/mdstat confused me. So I did a little digging: dev_number in the superblock for RAID version 1.2 is always in the 4256th through 4259th bytes in 32-bit little endian. All components of 1 md device are supposed to have

"grep md /proc/mdstat" reveals 3 partitions on sda and sdb that are the building blocks of 3 software RAID-1 devices.

The 4256th byte of the partitions in question, which seems to match up with the mdp_superblock_1 data structure in include/uapi/linux/raid/md_p.h . dev_number starts at byte 169 in the superblock, which for a softRAID 1.2 is always 4096 bytes from the partition start.

100

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 24/02/2026

This is from an older router, but having the MAC address not be 1 text field is some terrible design. IIRC the format of a MAC addr is even standardized as 6 hex bytes separated by :s, and no one but a complete newbie would type out a MAC by hand.

Cropped screenshot of a router's web interface. IP address: 4 bytes in separate edit fields each 3 hars wide. MAC address: 6 hex bytes separated by :s in 1 edit field. Device name: 1 edit field that reads "mallory".

000

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 24/02/2026

This is not as good as the alternative ramen sources.

Cup Noodles (rich and savory beef broth) 16g protein. This is a ramen noodle thing designed for people who don't have time. There is a lot of pea fiber/taste in this. but this is fine. This ramen is actually less good than the Tapatio ramen (more expensive as of 2026/02/24.)

000

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 21/02/2026

Moira was so unhappy about this sweater, we took it off her after 5 minutes. Cats are usually very bad about wearing clothes.

Green-eyed black cat wearing a pink sweater and crouched under an ottoman in Christmas 2010. She was NOT happy about the sweater.

131

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 07/02/2026

I'm not sure, but I think the writing is Yi syllables. The second character (looks like an H on top of a W) is 3 over and 3 down from the top in KCharselect, UTF-16 0xA020, UTF-8 0xEA80A0.

Screenshot showing a bunch of Yi syllables, a form of writing from East Asia that showed up in a comment on an Archive Of Our Own writer's post.

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 04/02/2026

Back in the 1990s, Word 4.0 on MacOS had an interesting feature that I have not seen duplicated very often: You could drag a little bar from the top right corner down, and the view would split so that you could see 2 different parts of the document. You could then view part of page 1 at the top,

Screenshot of LibreOffice, showing some lorem ipsum text and a widget being dragged down from the top bar to about halfway down the window. This is to show a feature in Word 4.0 from the 1990s.

LibreOffice screenshot, showing what happened after the widget drag: The window is now horizontally split, there are 2 scrollbars on the right side. Top half shows sample text for page 1, bottom half shows sample text for page 27. This feature doesn't exist in LibreOffice, but it did in Word 4.0.

100

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 27/01/2026

When I got her, Mystic was not very much of a lap cat. But when it got cold in December, she decided that sitting in someone's lap was totally fine. My water glass is almost empty and I can't reach my phone. Halp.

Large black cat Mystic sitting on my lap, though the picture is from a while ago.

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 18/01/2026

The tabs and applications change all the time, but some constants are firefox, dolphin, kcalc, and konsole. Browsers, file managers, calculators, and terminals are never going away because they're very efficient ways to get work done.

Screenshot of a desktop running Linux. Firefox in foreground, active tab Discord with a conversation about building a new kind of website (monetizing news aggregation, basically.) Background applications visible are KCalc (calculator), KCharselect (character selector for non-native characters), dolphin (file manager), and konsole (terminal emulator, showing a wc command and a jstest /dev/input/js0 command).

020

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 15/01/2026

Sometimes, I am informed that I can't use the laptop right now. The struggle is real. #cats

Large, glossy green-eyed black cat Mystic parks her fuzzy butt directly on my laptop keyboard. A very narrow Ikea shelf with many CDs in it is in the background.

030

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 06/10/2025

How many Dust Puppies are in the average computer, though?

The Dust Puppy from User Friendly, a small round black fuzzball with big eyes and feet, in an ASCII-art rendition.

150

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 05/10/2025

Chicken or Birria? You can Change My Mind! (Leaning towards birria, but your comments can affect my dinner!)

Tapatio chicken ramen, yellow cardboard container with a guy in a sombrero prominently in the front.

Tapatio birria ramen, black cardboard container with a guy in a sombrero prominently featured in front.

100

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 04/10/2025

These two were self-contained sci-fi tales in 1983. 252 had an unusual layout. 253 had more pathos than average for the time as the FF couldn't actually help the aliens they found.

Fantastic Four vol 1 issue 252. The issue is entirely in landscape format, cover shows Ben, Reed, Sue, and Johnny (flamed on) in a destroyed urban environment.

Fantastic Four vol 1 issue 253. Cover shows space scene with a large green alien standing on a watery world. Headshots of Johnny, Ben, Reed, and Sue are below.

000

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 09/09/2025

Meta/Facebook covering up important safety studies? I'm shocked. Well, not that shocked. Also, 34 seconds from entering the site to receiving racism? That's horrible, and points out that people do not face meaningful consequences for being racists in some places on the internet.

Fry from Futurama says, "I am shocked. Shocked! Well, not that shocked."

000

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 07/09/2025

I can't even tell whether this tweet is supposed to be a parody or not. Sadly, the people at the top of this administration are universally some of the most corrupt, stupid, self-serving, venal, illiterate, drunk, and brain-damaged caricatures of humanity that I have ever seen.

US Dept. of Energy tweet: Wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially worthless when it is dark outside, and the wind is not blowing.

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 15/08/2025

Horses move their legs all the time, so if they break or damage any of the bones in them, things go bad very quickly. This is why this cartoon/trope exists.

Far Side cartoon with a woman reading a veterinary textbook. Chapter heading is 9, Equine Medicine, all diagnoses have the treatment as "shoot". (NOTE: this is sort of true; if a horse damages any of the bones in its legs, euthanasia is the best outcome 99% of the time.)

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 15/08/2025

I currently have a 12oz jar of pepperoncini on the top shelf of my cupboard. I have this irrational fear of me trying to take this jar off the shelf, failing, and having the jar fall 3.5 feet onto the countertop and shatter, making a giant mess and costing me $3.69.

12 oz jar of Mezzetta golden Greek pepperoncini, yellow peppers in vinegar with salt, described as "tender and crispy."

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 13/08/2025

2018-12-11, by someone using the Inspirobot motivational poster generator, is what I thought of immediately.

Inspirational-style poster (by Inspirobot) showing a man standing in a field while the sun rises behind him. The sky holds the words "Remain Hypernormalized and go back to sleep."

020

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 12/08/2025

It's been 18 years since I moved here, which is crazy. But I had a set of octagonal ceramic bowls, saucers, mugs, and plates when I was in Lansing, and I have no idea what happened to them. Goodwill? I know most of my winter clothing went there because Phoenix doesn't have winter like Michigan.

A picture showing black octagonal bowl, small plate, large plate, mug, saucer, and salad bowl.

020

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 01/08/2025

Farming horror games: Welcome to Elderfield, We Harvest Shadows, Pumpkin Panic. The last one is pretty short though.

A chibified Cthulhu that looks kind of like Hello Kitty, captioned "Hello Cthulhu".

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 28/07/2025

If you see this, post a redhead.

Redheaded woman in a corset. Filename says her name is Deanna Miller.

021

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 25/07/2025

Breaking: Hawking's theories disproved; black holes *can* have hair.

Black dog sitting in kitchen with white tile, viewed from above so that it looks like a circle with a nose and eyes. Caption: Scientists have discovered a black hole that has a gravitational field that is so strong that no treats or dropped food can escape.

060

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 15/07/2025

It's terrible how modern corporations destroy so much for the most venal and stupid reasons. Also this PLIF strip was about 25 years too early, but they predicted a similar thing happening in meat space.

Parking Lot Is Full 161: A kid wearing VR goggles walks down a city street, where a censored prostitute says something censored and 2 censored men fight and swear. Caption: Not satisfied with protecting children from bad media influences, parents install chips in their kids' heads which block out violence and sex in real life. Cut off from much of human experience, an entire generation grows up to be moral infants. You cannot imagine what kind of creatures *their* children will be.

1154

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 14/07/2025

Squirrels are usually a metaphor for chaos and not reaching goals?

A black wolf facing a white wolf in front of a full moon. Caption: "Inside you there are two wolves. You should probably see a doctor, the recommended amount of wolves inside you is zero."

0161

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 12/07/2025

I got this JPEG from a friend. I made this pencil and at least 5 other boxes of 7 like it 31 years ago. The wood's darkened, the ink's faded, some details have been worn away. This may actually be the last pencil like this in existence. (When and how does art die?)

A pencil on a canvas surface. Almost all the paint has been scraped from the pencil, and stylized designs have been drawn on the pencil in black ballpoint. The image has been Gimped into 3 pencil sections stacked on top of one another to make it more conveniently viewable and brightness/contrast adjusted.

020

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 12/07/2025

"A chicken's head is more cost-effective" is not a sentence I expected to see at any point in time, but I guess it has come to this.

A chicken in a KFC parking lot, captioned "That awkward moment when you spawn in the enemy's base."

030

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 04/07/2025

In Quantum Witch, if you solve a certain puzzle before you get the clue you need, you get this and the "Cheater" achievement. I, no, *everybody* needs Clippers Saves The World as DLC or something.

Quantum Witch, an altered credit sequence you get by solving a puzzle before you get the clue needed to solve it. Has "Self Indulgent Credit Sequence" by NikkiJay and "Awesome Hilarious Writing Team That Wrote The Good Bits" as Paul Rose, Stephanie Sterling, and NikkiJay (allegedly).

Quantum Witch, an altered credit sequence you get by solving a puzzle before you get the clue needed to solve it. Credits are almost the same as normal, but final line is "Clippers will return in Clippers Saves The World."

041

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 02/07/2025

Mystic the house panther concurs.

Head shot of Mystic the green-eyed black cat sitting in an office chair, whiskers and ears both prominent.

020

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 01/07/2025

This Bloom County strip (June 25, 1983) was never collected in any of the print volumes available in the 1980s and 1990s. It's a shame, since a lot of us have been there with Yaz and we might not have had an Opus. readallcomics.com/the-bloom-co... about 3/4 of the way down.

Bloom County strip for June 25, 1983. Yaz Pistachio says she's not a cheerleader type, nor a jockette, nor a "head", and she's sure no Valley Girl. Simply put, she just doesn't fit anywhere. Opus says, "Did she say she didn't fit?" then Portnoy says, "She said she didn't fit." Opus nuzzles her and says, "Oh yes, right here, OO! she fits nicely... Oo! Lovely." Milo says, "Oh this is sooo schmaltzy" while facepalming.

010

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 25/06/2025

*groan*, but have some penguins anyway:

4 fuzzy grey penguin chicks, one with wings spread out, stand near several adult penguins.

110

danceswithcrows @crow202.com · 23/06/2025

Mystic the house panther is round and cobby like a British Shorthair, and demands punctuality at meal time. She sometimes refuses to take a piece of ham if I give one to her, which is odd.

Cobby black cat Mystic sniffs a bag which recently held a cabbage. She has always been interested in cabbage for some reason.

010